Shameless self-promotion: You can view the awarding of my bronze medal at the 1 hour, 11 minute mark, of the award ceremony video, over at Justin.tv.

Today, I received score sheets for my two entries into the National Homebrew Competition final round. The bronze medal American barleywine scored a combined 38.3 points and advanced on to the mini-Best of Show round. It came in 3rd out of 252 entries in the strong ale category. Here are the score sheets (click on the images to view a larger size version you can actually read:)

Cover Sheet Mark's Bigfoot Barleywine

Score Sheet 1 Mark's Bigfoot Barleywine

Score Sheet 2 Mark's Bigfoot Barleywine

Score Sheet 3 Mark's Bigfoot Barleywine

The Beanilla Porter scored a combined 34 points and did not place in the finals. I was surprised at some of the comments saying that the fresh vanilla overpowered the underlying robust porter style. Upon further research in the BJCP style guidelines for spiced beers, they do repeatedly talk about a balance of the spice and the underlying style. Strangely, this received much higher scores in the first round (and a first place regionally), and the level if spice was complemented several times. Go figure…

Cover Sheet Beanilla Porter

Score Sheet 1 Beanilla Porter

Score Sheet 2 Beanilla Porter

Score Sheet 3 Beanilla Porter

All in all, this has been a good experience. I was always just a bit wary of the whole judging process, and some of that is still there. I can’t help but feel that judging beer ultimately comes down to very subjective calls by judges. Aside from strong ales that didn’t meet the primary BJCP style guidelines, how exactly was my bronze medal barleywine better than 249 other strong ales?

The barleywine keg blew last Monday, but I’ve bottled eight bottles for potentially entering the ale again next year and see how it does after another twelve months of aging. But, I also need to brew the barleywine again ASAP:)